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Is new technology an advocator of democracy? How much power do we have?

“The current crisis of journalism is weakening public understanding, and poses a threat to democracy” writes James Curran in his article ‘The Future of Journalism’, in regards to a widespread view among journalists. Is that the case, or is journalism misrepresenting democratic choices by “defending businesses and the police” for example, and in local papers’ case – “local elites”? It’s no mystery that old and new media alike are influential on many levels, but what is uncertain is how we should look at the increasingly large presence of new media technologies.

Curran mentions the view of a journalism Renaissance; believers would say the rise of web-based journalism compensates for the decline of the traditional, providing more content, information, analysis, and precision – hardly hurtful to democracy. He also gives attention to the term ‘journalism’ transforming entirely to become ‘journalistic activity,’ a professional-amateur network that gives the public more power than ever before.

Public power is a red thread in another of Curran’s texts, ‘Technology Foretold’, wherein he discusses the history of television whilst disproving technological hype, and how journalists produced misinformation about new media. The arrival of interactive television was no less than a promise broken, suffering from “underinvestment, lost money and was a consumer flop”. In the 1980s, “cable TV did not inaugurate an economic and social revolution,” he writes, but do different mediums of new technology have the chance to now?

Future Publishing‘s Mike Goldsmith puts his efforts toward ensuring app success, maybe the social revolution TV did not bring, on iPads and tablets (arguably the very attribution of new media) and said in an interview that to “extend the life of a brand”, especially outside the UK, it was beneficial not to go with print media, rather allowing publications to grow digitally, incorporating even ‘second screen’ applications that involve interaction and tutorials.

In retrospect, as is the frequent conclusion when discussing technological development in journalism, new technology gives birth to much more content and public cooperation than the exaggerated promises of television’s beginnings, and the future may well hold endless possibilities for democratic action.